This article focuses on the “wicked problem” of siting nuclear waste repositories. It addresses the question of why local communities are not willing to host nuclear waste facilities, and what factors play a decisive role for acceptance and voluntarism. We discuss the extent to which compensations together with trust could be decisive in easing the decision making processes for a site search. Starting from the assumption that voluntary processes have been the preferred path in countries in an advanced stage of planning or constructing a repository, we question whether the factors that allowed for success in siting in Finland, Sweden and France or for failure (United Kingdom) can be of use in other contexts, e.g., in Germany. By analyzing the relationship between government, industry and the communities willing to host repositories, we discuss different forms of voluntarism in combination with various site typologies, i.e., Blowers´ “nuclear oases”; “communities with industry awareness”; “nuclear communities”, and “Springfield communities.”